130 replies to this topic

[borisof007]

The system should eventually allow for us to "ready" 4 mechs for deployment, then depending on the map, choose one of those four within a limited time slot prior to match start.

[Treckin]

I posted the same question in the ATD34 hopefully they ping a response.

[malibu43]

Another thing that I don't know has been really mentioned in this thread is that allowing players to select mechs after they've been placed on teams and see the map eliminates the opportunity for the match maker to ever do any sort of weight balancing.

[jay35]

Henry Buzz Gerber, on 12 March 2013 - 11:20 AM, said:

hmmm. Very good topic, military intel can be very, very wrong.

But normally isn't. People would be fired and more competent ones would replace them.

Quote

What your facing and battle location can vary from second to second.

But not on the strategic scale, just only after you've dropped in a location might a few unknowns crop up. Nothing on the scale of not having any clue what environment you're dropping into.

[CDLord HHGD]

How about instead of a launch button, you could match a mech to a map and queue up and wait till there's enough players? Limit to 4 queues in progress at any one time. Group leaders would control the queue for their group and select up to 4 maps. When you find a match, the others reset.

This'll prolly get buried, but borrowing a bit from STO and WAR.....

[Steinar Bergstol]

LSlice, on 12 March 2013 - 07:59 AM, said:

I've thought about this like the OP. If I'm dropping into a place like Alpine or River City, I would outfit my mech for those ranges. Realistically, that's what a pilot would do if he has the garage and the equipment around. On the other hand, not every pilot has the luxury of multiple loadouts and a crew of mechanics to change it for him (or do they? I don't know the lore).

Since you're asking about the lore. No, no they do not have the luxury of outfitting their mech for each battle. In fact, the vast, vast, vast majority of mechwarriors apart from the obscenely rich are stuck with one mech and its one single loadout for their entire career. That mech is usually stock or near stock and can be centuries old, handed down from generation to generation and is as much an heirloom as a warmachine.

Those few who do have a modified mech do not change it from battle to battle because it is extremely expensive, timeconsuming and involves a lot of hard work for the techs. Major changes like engines, internal structure and the like even requires a full factory setup for it to be properly done, and thanks to the fact that many systems in Battlemechs are only halfway understood by the techs (thanks to the decline of tech knowhow from the Succession Wars and ComStar's tendency to assassinate intelligent and tech-savvy people who don't work for them) there's a high risk that any modification to a mech will fail or even if successful cause problems and glitches the techs won't be able to work out.

So, no, the way we change mechs around willy-nilly in the computer games are nowhere near what is possible in the lore until the advent of omnimechs, and even they were stuck with the engines/internal structure/etc they came with from the factory.

Edited by Steinar Bergstol, 12 March 2013 - 03:38 PM.

[kilgor]

I like the randomness because it adds a bit of a challenge to it. Here's a tip. You can wait behind cover and eventually the enemy will close in if they can't hit you at range because they're not going to wait forever for you to walk in front of their barrage. Sadly, I even see people with LRMs close in. And if you have a slow mech, defend a base or think of it as mopping up duty.

[jakucha]

The problem with knowing the map is you'd get unbalanced builds and lots of the same ones in general. The reason stock mechs often have a mix of weapon ranges is because mechwarriors could be dropped in any situation and hey had to be ready for it. They can't really modify their mechs as easily as we can in this game as well, which just means it's too easy to abuse if you knew what map you're going to.

[Treckin]

I think the ideas have been hashed out pretty well, I definitely got what I wanted across. I hope the devs saw this thread and decide to take action.

[shabowie]

Agree. It should be see what map, pick mech. The fact that people see all kinds of problematic things happening at that point is that game balance and map balance isn't ideal.

[Jabilo]

The trouble with knowing the map is it creates a bigger divide between new and old players.

Old hands will have a mech set up ready to go to exploit every given map.

Some people have literally millions of spare c bills and will even go so far as to have multiples of a single variant to take advantage of different maps. All kitted out with engines and the best kit. Multiple module sets the works.

Try dropping in to that Sh!tstorm in a trial mech...

Not saying it should never happen, but careful thought and balancing would be required.

[Sprouticus]

ragingmunkyz, on 12 March 2013 - 10:04 AM, said:

We shouldn't be forced to do that to get the most out of the game, a good game would make it possible even for pugs to assign roles and formulate a strategy. It's far from impossible, it works in a number of other games that allow you to select classes/builds/loadouts before a match when you see the map. In games like tribes or lol, I've seen pugs that were capable of some impressive teamwork, and those pugs were some of the most fun matches I've ever had.

monkey, I disagree with the rrest of your pos but I totally agree with this statement. In fact I was advocating a MM syetm where you select the role you wish to play before you launch and the MM system matches against role as well as tonnage and skill.

I wish I could find that post. It was form last March or February.


If they wish to encourage role warafre, they need to allow us to select a role before launching.


Select your mech
Select your role
Ready up (if in a team)
Launch
Get the map after.

MM matches role then skill then tonnage, in that order. The pre launch screen should tell you everyones role as well so you a command leader can give specific commands. Personally I think this would encourage teamwork at a much higher rate than anything aside from comms.

[Treckin]

shabowie, on 12 March 2013 - 04:47 PM, said:

Agree. It should be see what map, pick mech. The fact that people see all kinds of problematic things happening at that point is that game balance and map balance isn't ideal.

Flawless interpretation, thanks!

[Jerod Drekmor]

ragingmunkyz, on 12 March 2013 - 09:04 AM, said:

First of all, please learn some basic grammar, reading this made my brain hurt, but I'll indulge your arguments anyhow.

Have you heard the saying about what happens when you assume things? Speaking for myself and the other tactically-minded players, we want more depth from this game and just another arena fps. We want what PGI keeps promising, "role warfare." PGI keeps using that specific phrase to refer to a type of engagement in which we have to use at least some basic strategy to prevail. I want to be able to set up scouts, ecm coverage, snipers, and a basic plan before a fight, because I believe that will provide much more interesting gameplay.

To your second point, it does work that work that way. First of all, if you are told you need to deploy to a certain planet, you should have some idea of the layout you are going to encounter when you get there, and you would be able to choose which mech would be appropriate before you even left. That aside, there are indeed dropships that can carry that many mechs, so even if you had to respond with what was already in a dropship, you might theoretically have access to quite a few mechs.

Oh, you want proof? http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Mammoth, that's a dropship that can carry 8 thousand tons of cargo. That means 80 Atlai. Or how about this one: http://www.sarna.net...moth_(DropShip), 75,121 tons of cargo space, which is 751 Atlai...and one flea. Would you care for a towel to wipe the egg from your face?

First of all english isnt my first language, second I dont care about head of grammar n azi.

As for your points, and I must say you made me thinking, we cant know exacly wich map we playing, I would be good if all gamers where chill out bros but there is lots of ppl with small(U know what) who have to prove something by wining at all cost. Resonable option is to select planet but no specific map.

80 Atlai you say?....cool, but you have no ammo for reloads, no fuel, food, medical stuff, nothing but 80 mechs capable of doing 1 mission. Go ahead, serve me some eags....

Edited by Jerod Drekmor, 12 March 2013 - 05:26 PM.

[1453 R]

People...be realistic.

All you folks with bright eyes and shiny dreams of how selecting your 'Mech after the map drops is going to just magically make everyone coordinate with their PUG teammates better, develop better combat and teamwork skills, improve matchmaking balance and make great strides towards World Peace are deluding yourselves. Folks will use that ability – in whatever form it takes, whether you get access to your entire garage (so that we can just throw BT tabletop canon and lore authenticity even more completelyout the airlock) or just your for quick-ready 'Mechs – to do one thing, and one thing alone. And that thing will be to take their favorite suicidal knife-range brawling BattleBoat into maps like River City, and their favorite 6-PPC/80-LRM Stalker into maps like Alpine. Nobody, but nobody, but nobody, will use it to coordinate with other players any more than they already do. If they wanted to coordinate with their teammates, don't you think they would have already found a way to do that?

For every one player who changes their 'Mech pre-drop to try and coordinate with his team, shore up holes in his group's configuration and uses the option to try and be a team player, there will be fifty who can now play Splattercats 100% of the time on short-range maps and 6-PPC Stalkers 100% of the time on larger maps. If you think otherwise, you're either a dimwit or incredibly unobservant. They will have even less reason than they do now to remember that there are ways to build BattleMechs for which a firing button other than the Alpha Strike button makes sense. The only reason any of us will have to take balanced, sensible loadouts into a match will be personal friggin' pride. Does no one remember the state of the game prior to Alpine and the Trebuchet?

I do. I sorta started seriously playing for a couple months or so prior to that, and so far as I could tell half the player base had forgotten that ranges greater than 270 meters, and weapons that had them, existed. Are we seriously saying that we want to go back to that? Because however bad you think boating and over-optimization is or isn't right now, I guarantee you that it'll be far, far worse if you give people the chance to tailor their cheese for each individual map.

It's a nice piece of wishful thinking, but that's all it is – wishful thinking. You do have to account for the lowest common denominator in games like this, because that's where half your playerbase is sitting and they will have absolutely zero problems with ruining the game for the rest of us if you let them.

[IamTheEggMan]

jay35, on 12 March 2013 - 10:56 AM, said:

Oh please. If an army isn't doing reconnaissance, they deserve to fail. Throughout history armies have always attempted to know as much as possible about their enemy and the terrain for the battle. Ideally, they also choose the spot on the field where the battle will take place so the terrain is advantageous, though that is not always an option.

But from human spies/scouts scouting out the terrain, to aircraft, satellites, drones, you name it, there is always recon involved before committing forces and the terrain and environment are primary factors to determine alongside enemy force composition, in order to bring the right equipment for the job.

Jay, you need to brush up on your history there mate, cause it is littered with hundreds of example of how things go utterly wrong.
I'm sure Hitlers intel said be could take Moscow before winter, his troops died in the snow, Napoleon made the same mistake, and had to eat his horse because of it. American troops in ww2 spent their first winter freezing their arses off because some ******* forgot it gets cold in Europe. Oh yeah, there were WMDs in Iraq too..... That doesn't mean to say all intel is wrong, I mean I get lrms on alpine sometimes.

[Sean von Steinike]

NO. Just say no to stupid cheese builders picking mechs for the map. Screw that. Make a balanced build and you won't need to pick a sepecial mech for a special map. You know what is boring? Same lame optiomized builds on same maps all the time with no variety.

[Corvus Antaka]

Id agree with mech selection mapped to planetary selection with an area of maps hot-medium or cold-medium.

[CheezPanther]

This cant happen given current matchmaking.. It's very much impossible with ELO...

ELO and the matchmaker need to know what mech ur running before it can match you.. and as it stands currently it matches you and throws u into a map/match.. afaik teams are set before it decides on a map and ships u off to connect to the match server..

Could it possibly be reworked to allow this.. prolly.. but then that would add a whole new level of complication to the matching routine.. It would have to split the pool of players into map queues then try to see if theres enough ELO to form a match. The pool of players waiting for match would prolly be cut significantly based on almost any map..

The resulting division of players into seperate map queues would have a drastic impact on wait times.. This becuase there would be much smaller pools to draw ELO matches out of vs one giant pool of potential matches....

now setting up a lobby system of sorts to allow teams to form matches on thier own would be interesting.. Giving each mech a certain weight like a BV and limiting the weight / BV to a team would eliminate need for ELO matching..

even Training / skirmish matches could be implemented allowing map and possible rule selections.. These would be unranked and player selected teams.. the concession to this would have to be no XP and no cbills awarded.. stats would not be counted in this environment either.

[ShadowSpirit]

CapperDeluxe, on 12 March 2013 - 06:44 AM, said:

Only problem would be how would the matchmaker then be able to take drop weights into account when matching people (which it doesn't do currently but will at some point)?

Sounds like a flaw in the matchmaker. There are so many people that intentionally disconnect from the matches now it's not even funny.

CheezPanther, on 12 March 2013 - 09:59 PM, said:

This cant happen given current matchmaking.. It's very much impossible with ELO... ELO and the matchmaker need to know what mech ur running before it can match you.. and as it stands currently it matches you and throws u into a map/match.. afaik teams are set before it decides on a map and ships u off to connect to the match server..

Then the entire game is screwed. This isn't chess ... it's MechWarrior. They need to enhance the social aspects of the game so people can take care of this themselves.